For Round 2 of the 2022 season, we we’re back at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. One of the fastest on the calendar despite being a street track, where cars will be going full throttle for about 80% of the distance. So, for this year’s race a few corners were widened, and barriers pushed back a little to improve visibility and avoid too many crashes – an issue that affected the race here last year.
Free Practice
FP 1, 2 and 3 at Jeddah this year was the usual stuff, high fuel runs, tuning the car, qualifying simulation runs, etc. Kevin’s Haas had reliability issues for most of FP 1 and 2 which brought out one of the Red Flags. Another brought out by the 50-meter mark Styrofoam board falling on track and being ripped by Lando’s car. Alpha Tauri saw Yuki stop the car on track in FP2 and Pierre stopping at the pit exit due to clutch issues. Other than that, it was mainly a lot of lock ups and McLaren and Mercedes drivers complaining about massive porpoising.
Qualifying
As opposed to Practice Qualifying was a wee bit more interesting, shall we say. Q1 was off to a good start with the front runners comfortably at the top and at no risk of being pushed to the bottom 5. But one man without that satisfaction was Lewis Hamilton. The 7-time world champion was in P16 trying to improve when Nicholas Latifi crashed at turn 13 after he lost control of the back of the car – which ended his qualifying. Lewis however had time about 6 minutes to put his car in the top 15.
His first attempt after the red flag didn’t improve on his best time. And his second attempt put him just above the line in P15. But Lance Stroll in his Aston Martin crossed the line just behind Hamilton and replaced him pushing Lewis into 16th place and OUT in Q1!
Q2
In Q2 we saw another red flag brought out by Mick Schumacher’s high-speed crash who needed to be lifted out of the car and sent to the hospital for checks. Thankfully, he is ok.
Q3
The fight for pole continued between Ferrari and Red Bull, with Charles in P1 and Sainz behind him. Perez on a hot lap replaced them to take provisional pole with a once in lifetime lap according to Checo. Max was the only one on a flying lap that could out qualify him. In the end Max was only good enough for P4 and Checo took his first pole on his 215th GP – the largest number of races before taking pole for any driver to match his other record of most GP before winning his first GP which happened in the 2020 Sakhir GP.
Race Day
Formation lap on Sunday, and already we had our second retirement of the day. Yuki Tsunoda, whose race ended before it even began like Mick’s who didn’t start due to his qualifying crash. After the race started with the rest, Charles in second behind Perez decided to pit but stayed out as Sergio went in to cover Ferrari off. Was Ferrari bluffing or just picked the alternate strategy to Perez – we will never know. It did however play right into their hand as Latifi crashed for the 2nd time this weekend. The safety car was deployed and gave everyone behind Perez a free pit stop, unfortunately relegating Checo to P4. As the pit stop drama played out between Perez and the rest, Alpine allowed their drivers to go head on – resulting in a brilliant battle between Ocon and Alonso.
Albon, Bottas and Alonso were eventually forced to retire with Ricciardo forced to stop in the pit entry bringing out the VSC. Mercedes scrambled to call Hamilton into the pits during the VSC, but he had already passed the pit entry. Which was closed by the time he made his way around due to Ricciardo’s car blocking the entry.
Fight for the Lead
But once again in the final laps Charles and Max where at each other battling for P1. Max passed Leclerc into the last corner, and he repassed Max on the pit straight with DRS like their battle in Bahrain. The battle got so fierce that the 2 tried out-braking each other into the DRS detection zone trying to get the other to pass it first. And during this game of DRS chicken both locked up into the final turn and after a few laps of this Max stayed patiently behind Charles, passed him on the straight and went on to win the GP.
